Tag: agriculture

There’s good news and bad news for New Zealand’s dairy industry this week. On the one hand, research has found a number of compounds that can cut methane emissions from ruminants (cows and sheep) by up to 90% by reducing populations of the bacteria that produce the gas. On the other hand, research into the external costs of dairying — the costs not currently born by dairy companies — suggest that dairying’s value to the NZ economy may amount to a “zero sum” game. At the very least the national income generated by dairy sales is significantly offset by the costs of remediating the environmental impacts caused by that farming — costs that are born by the general tax payer, not agribusiness — according to a team from Massey University.

It’s a very exciting result but there’s still a lot of checking to be done before you actually get something that a farmer can use safely.

Interviewed by the NZ Herald, Dr Rick Pridmore, chairman of the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, was upbeat:

The results are significant for two reasons. First, because they work on livestock consuming a grass-based diet and, second because the short-term trials showed such dramatic results,” he said.

However, it might take up to 5 years for these treatments to reach farmers, as the compounds are tested for the possibility of residues in meat and milk.

Cutting methane emissions might reduce diary farmers’ liability under an emissions trading scheme that included agriculture — they are at present excluded — but would have no impact on the other external costs calculated in a new paper, New Zealand Dairy Farming: Milking Our Environment for All Its Worth, which suggests that the costs of repairing the environmental damage done by intensive dairying approaches the value generated by the activity.

A strong message from the study is that avoiding pollution is far cheaper for everyone than trying to clean it up afterwards and there is now ample evidence that farmers can make more profit and pollute less when not myopically chasing increased production.

Unsurprisingly, the costs calculated in the paper are vigorouslycontested by farming organisations and some academics, but will chime with New Zealanders concerned that the rapid expansion of industrial dairying is significantly degrading important rural environments and chipping away at what’s left of NZ’s so-called clean green image.

The NZ Emissions Trading Scheme has failed and should be replaced by a carbon tax, Green Party co-leader Russel Norman told the party’s annual conference yesterday [NZ Herald, Stuff]. Outlining the Green’s new Climate Protection Plan (pdf) Norman told delegates that the government’s mismanagement had “hollowed out and weakened [the ETS] to the point of redundancy, accelerated deforestation and driven up emissions.” If in government after September’s general election, the Greens would replace the ETS by a suite of policies built around a levy on greenhouse gas emissions, with revenues recycled to business and consumers through cuts in income taxes.

Establish a Climate Commission to provide expert and independent advice to the government on: carbon prices, carbon budgets, and complementary measures to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Phase out the failed Emissions Trading Scheme and set an initial price on carbon:
$25 per tonne on CO2 equivalent emissions for all sectors except agriculture and forestry. Dairy emissions will pay $12.50 per tonne. Forestry will be credited at $12.50 per tonne.

Recycle all revenues raised from a carbon charge back to families and businesses through a $2,000 income tax-free band and a one percent company tax cut. A Climate Tax Cut. Households will be better off.

Introduce a suite of complementary measures to support the rapid transition to a carbon neutral economy.

The tax and dividend scheme has been costed by independent economists BERL (report here). An average household will be over $300 better off per annum.

Two major new government reports on New Zealand’s emissions projections and the expected impacts of four degrees of warming on NZ agriculture were released without fanfare last Friday — the timing clearly designed to minimise media fallout from reports that highlight the paucity and ineffectiveness of current climate policy settings.

At the National Agricultural Fieldays earlier this month, climate change minister Tim Groser claimed that including agriculture in the emissions trading scheme would be “utter environmental and economic madness”. At The Daily Blog today, I explain why Groser is talking utter nonsense, and agriculture needs to be included in the ETS as soon as possible. Comments at TDB, please…